By Ken Fletcher

ONE OF the world's most iconic tractors, the legendary Ferguson TE20 – or the ‘Grey Fergie’, as it was more popularly known – is 70 this year.

Massey Ferguson – the giant business that the Ferguson company eventually became – is aiming to celebrate its heritage this year, marking the anniversary of the start of production of its famous tractor, starting this month.

On July 6, 1946, the first Ferguson TE20 rolled off the assembly line at its former Banner Lane manufacturing plant in Coventry. The tractor was the brainchild of engineer and inventor, Harry Ferguson, one of the founders of the present-day Massey Ferguson.

The key to the global success of the tractor was its unique three-point linkage implement attachment system controlled by the tractor’s hydraulics. Designated the ‘Ferguson System,’ this effectively turned the tractor and implement into a single working unit, replacing the cumbersome trailed method of implement operation.

The Ferguson System can truly lay claim to producing one of the most important advances in the efficiency of food production in the 20th century. In doing so, it achieved Harry Ferguson's lifelong ambition of helping farmers affordably mechanise all aspects of crop production to better and more economically feed the world.

Rated at 20 hp, the TE20 (Tractor England) was incredibly light and small, yet easily outperformed bigger units, at much lower running costs.

More than half a million of these diminutive tractors were built at the Banner Lane plant between 1946 and July 13, 1956. A large number of them are still at work on farms and they are prized collectors’ items – including still being the 'prime mover' on many island and Highland farms.

The Ferguson TE20’s 70th anniversary inspired the current ‘Tractors – from factory to field’ exhibition at Coventry Transport Museum and the public display of the Daniel Massey Bronze Sculpture at the City’s Herbert Museum and Art Gallery.

A key event will be ‘70 tractors for 70 years’ staged by Culture Coventry, a spectacular parade of Massey Ferguson and Ferguson tractors through the city to Millennium Place outside the transport museum today (July 30), being brought together by the Friends of Ferguson Heritage Club.

This will include a wide range of vintage and veteran models, as well as some of the latest Massey Ferguson tractors.